Lesson One Pitch

Pitch Pitch refers to the highness or lowness of a sound. In music the highness or lowness of a sound is determined by its placement on the staff. High sound Sounds may be placed on one of the lines or spaces Low sound Click on the speaker icon ( ) to listen to the sound of each note

Melody When you put a row of notes together they create a melody or tune Click the icon: Can you guess the name of the melody? That’s right! It is “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. Notice how the notes in this melody move from line to space and space to line. This is known as step-wise motion

Treble Clef Find a piano keyboard and play some of the notes to the far right. They are very high. If you were to write some of these notes on the staff (five lines), you would put a treble clef at the start of the staff. The treble clef placed at the beginning of the staff shows that the notes on the staff are high.

Notes in the Treble Clef Each note in the treble clef has its own name that you will recognize as the first seven letters of the alphabet Click on the icon and listen to how they move from high to low

Lines and Spaces The staff has five lines and four spaces. The notes on the lines can be remembered by thinking of the words: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. The notes in the spaces spell a very familiar word: F A C E.

Ledger Lines There are also notes which can be written above or below The extra lines drawn for these notes are called ledger lines

Note Name Review #1 Name the notes in the following melody Refer back to Slide 5 if you need some help Now listen to the melody. Do you recognize it? skip step Now listen to how a famous composer, Mozart, used this melody in one of his compositions Notice how he uses skips as well as steps in the melody

Note Name Review #2 Name the notes in this melody written by Joseph Haydn Now listen to how he used this melody in his “Surprise Symphony”

Homework Enter Note Name Review 1 & 2 into the notation program you are using and put the correct note names underneath. Online Support For more enrichment on the topic of Pitch go to: Ricci Adam's Music Theory From menu on left select “Staff, Clefs, Ledger Lines”